


Make-Believe

by FhimeChan



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Christmas, Family Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Gen, Mild Gore, Post-Canon, Romantic or platonic up to the reader, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22056322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FhimeChan/pseuds/FhimeChan
Summary: John has a Christmas mystery to solve.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2019





	Make-Believe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SandyWormbook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandyWormbook/gifts).



> This story exists because of Sandy, who graciously offered to beta it.

It started with a trail in the snow five days before Christmas. One neat row of steps getting closer to the window of John and Sherlock's flat, another going away. No prints on the shatterproof glass.

“Sherlock?” John yelled in the general direction of the upper room, too busy trying to fit Rosie into her pink winter jacket to bother to look for his flatmate.

“John?” He sounded alert but distract. Not sleeping then, but probably working on some project which would mess up their dining room again.

“Any reason for a stalker?” Rosie twirled out of his hands and jumped towards the door as soon as John was done with the zipper.

Sherlock said, “Christmas.”

John shrugged that off, as Sherlock would tell him if anyone could even remotely threaten Rosie. He opened the door, smiling at how she ran out in the afternoon sun. Everyone, including Mycroft and Greg, was handling Rosie’s security. There was nothing to worry about.

* * *

Three days to Christmas, and Sherlock was at the morgue. Of course.

“Rosie’s eating too many biscuits.”

Sherlock casually pulled another metre of gut out of the body he was working on, and a small heart-shaped piece of metal fell out of the dead tissue and over the counter. The corners of Sherlock mouth turned briefly upwards.

Molly said, “She asked for a double serving of my chocolate mint ones last week, but they contained hardly any butter.”

She offered Sherlock a plastic bag for the still bloody heart, which she threw on top of a growing stack.

John, without looking up from the kindergarden permit he was trying to compile, said, “Nope. I’m checking her weight every day. She’s not eating anything without me knowing.”

Sherlock hummed, as another metal piece, this time star shaped, fell out with the next length of offal. “What about the crumbles on the counter?”

John sighed and raised his head from a line requiring him to enumerate all the places he had slept in in the last ten years. “Which crumbles?”

Sherlock glanced up at him, eyebrow raised. “Someone’s eating our chocolate biscuits, John. Any suspects?” He gestured at Molly. “Hammer?”

Sherlock's tools were all inside a duffel bag on the floor. Molly took off her gloves and extracted a tool from the pile of junk inside it. “Maybe Santa?”

John snorted. Molly held the hammer just outside of Sherlock’s reach. “Magic word?”

Sherlock glared. “Please and thank you.” He scoffed, as he did every time he performed ‘socially constructed useless rites’ for the sake of Rosie's education. “You forgot to list our Oxford escapade.”

John groaned and picked up his form. He stabbed the paper with the pencil to add the address, before saying, “You think it's Santa or my imagination.”

Sherlock nodded as if that was completely reasonable and asked Molly for a meat grinder.

* * *

The next day, John came down to find the fireplace ashes all over the floor. He called Mycroft.

“Nobody broke into your house.” Mycroft answered before John managed to ask anything. “Now, if you mind, I’m on the line with both the CIA and the KGB.”

“Sor-,” John scratched his nose, trying to avoid to sneeze. “Wait, you never tell me who you're negotiating with. Are you real-”

On the other end of the line there was a shuffling, then Greg’s voice. “Myc, you okay-” And the line fell off.

As he started to swap the floor, John considered that once he would have been outraged if anyone hanged up on him. Or maybe he would have laughed at his friends. Or at the very least he would have had a reaction, any reaction. The Holmes’s influence on him was reaching an alarming level if all he could muster was resignation.

He stopped, noticing the pattern of the ashes on the floor. They were spread in front of the fireplace and under the Christmas tree, with footsteps connecting the two places. There were even ashes on Sherlock’s last project, his severed-feet-in-progress. Sherlock would have never done it, not when he had scolded Mrs. Hudson for looking at the meat on display.

Since Mycroft said nobody broke inside their house, did it really mean…? 

Sherlock chose that moment to enter the room. He sniffed the air and sneezed. “John, what did you do? It’s disgusting.” He saw the ashes covering his project. “ _Hey_.”

John looked between the spare body pieces on the table and the black veil of dirt on the floor, and decided to go back to bed with Rosie, leaving his flatmate to complain and not to clean a single square inch of the room.

Rosie snuggled closer to him on the bed. “All okay?”

John kissed her on the forehead. “Yes, Santa made a mess.”

She nodded and went back to sleep.

* * *

On Christmas Eve, Mrs. Holmes was throwing her almost-niece in the air and catching her up at the last moment, while Sherlock pretended not to keep an eye on them in case an emergency landing was needed.

The almost-granny said, “Woohhhoo, like an aeroplane!”

“Air-plane!” Yelled Rosie, with the careful pronunciation Sherlock was teaching her. “Like Santa!”

“Yes, like Santa!” Mrs. Holmes laughed, throwing her again. “Did he got your note?”

She yelled, “Yes!” and looked at Sherlock. “And the bis-cuits!”

Sherlock nodded, twitching from the desire to catch her and put her safely on the floor. He managed other few launches before John decided they had both suffered enough and went to stop his almost-mother-in-law.

* * *

John in theory knew that the big unexpected glittery box under the Christmas tree came from Mycroft, because he was the only one who could bypass all of their security measures, but in practice he was not so sure anymore.

Rosie, on the other hand, was adamant Santa brought it, as she told every single person who came to visit her that day.

* * *

Few days after the New Year’s Eve, John was taking advantage of Rosie’s absence to sort through Sherlock’s collection of disguises to find her a costume, when he saw a white beard, a big red jacket and matching trousers. He stood still, as a lot of things started to make sense.

He needed to be face to face for this conversation, so he grabbed the outfit and marched into the kitchen, where Sherlock was busy sorting out Rosie’s teabags by smell.

John stood still on the door, waiting for Sherlock to notice him. Lately, he seemed to be more aware of Rosie and John, even while he was working.

Sherlock dropped a teabag on the table and looked up. “Ah, you solved your mystery.”

Why was he acting as if it all was normal? It wasn’t.

Now that he thought about it, John liked that.

He sagged on their agreed-upon clean chair, letting the red fabric drape over his knees. “Mind explaining?” It came out way less sarcastic than Sherlock deserved, considering the ashes he had had to clean.

“Kids are more keen on understanding their parents’ opinions than we give them credit for. If you believed in Santa, it was probable Rosie would believe in him too. So I made sure you did.” Sherlock walked around the table, picking up and inspecting the fake beard. “Plus, you believe in tons of illogical stuff.”

John snatched the item back with more force than strictly necessary. “Ibuprofen was physiologically tested by the medical community.”

Sherlock shrugged. “Bloodletting was too.”

John rolled his eyes. His gaze dropped to the beard, which, he realized, looked brand new. His lips curled upwards. “So… The Christmas Spirit finally got to you.”

“I’m not Scrooge.”

Sherlock wrinkled his nose. He always looked less human when he did that. John tried to imagine how it would have looked with the fluffy white beard on and giggled. “You’d have worn it.”

Sherlock glared.

John said, “You must, now, or I’ll tell Rosie.”

Sherlock pretended not to hear it, as he ignored the resulting wave of laughter, but they both knew he would. For John and Rosie.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
